AI is blowing up music. How should the Grammys handle it?

Today I’m talking with Harvey Mason Jr., who is CEO of the Recording Academy — that’s the outfit that puts on the Grammy Awards. I last talked to Harvey in 2024, when it was obvious that generative AI would upend the music industry, but still not exactly clear how that would happen.

Well, it’s been 18 months since that conversation, and you’re going to hear Harvey say that AI is now “omnipresent” in music production. And Harvey knows what he’s talking about — he is himself a legendary producer who’s worked with everyone from Janet Jackson to Beyoncé. Harvey has said that every session he’s been in recently has had AI in it, and I really wanted to know what that meant — what kinds of tools are musicians using, in what way, and what kind of music is it making for us? Is it any good?

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Because, as it stands, there’s an exponential increase in the rate of AI music creation. Streaming platform Deezer reports that more than 50,000 AI-generated songs are being uploaded every day. All that AI-generated music is getting harder to identify and filter out, while at the same time, tools like Suno have become mainstream parts of the creative process for musicians of all kinds. So I really wanted to know how Harvey experiences all of that and balances his role running the Grammy Awards, especially since the Recording Academy’s rules say that AI music isn’t eligible for the industry’s highest honors.

There’s a lot going on in this one. Harvey and I also talked about the Grammys moving to Disney after years on CBS and what it means to reach new younger audiences with award shows in the age of TikTok. If you’re a Decoder listener, you know that I’m always saying that whatever happens to the music industry happens to everything else five years later, and this conversation really underlined that for me.

Okay, Harvey Mason Jr., the CEO of the Recording Academy, on the future of AI and music. Here we go.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Harvey Mason Jr., you’re a songwriter, you’re a producer, and you’re the CEO of the Recording Academy. Welcome back to Decoder.

Thank you. Good to be here, man.

I’m excited to talk to you. It’s been about a year and a half since you were on the show. A lot has happened in a year and a half. I actually just want to start with a lightning round of the Decoder questions. I ask every CEO the same question, but I have so much on my list that I’m just going to do a check-in on whether these things have changed.

You’re the CEO of the Recording Academy, and that’s the organization that puts on the Grammys. You run MusiCares for Charity. It’s the social support system for most of the musicians in the United States. How is the Recording Academy structured? How many people work there, and has it changed at all in the past year and a half?

It’s definitely changed. We continue to grow and progress and try to do more, reach more people. As you said, we serve music and all the people that make it in a lot of different ways through our Grammy organization, which includes the Grammy Museum, MusiCares, as you mentioned, our advocacy efforts in DC, working with state lawmakers around the country, and then of course the Grammy show. And so we’re a little over 300 people, so it’s not a massive organization, but we punch above our weight, and we do a lot of work, and we’re very active.

The way that it’s changed is that I think we’re doing a good job of keeping up with the changes that are happening, and that is nonstop, especially with technology, new styles of delivering music, creating music, and consuming music. And then also trying to make sure that we’re staying in tune or relevant with what’s happening in music genres, things that are happening. New popularity comes up. People are consuming different styles of music, music from different parts of the world. All those are things that are ever-changing, and I love that our organization is moving quickly and staying ahead of a lot of those things.

Are you investing more on the policy side, on the production side, where you’re saying you’re changing? What part specifically is growing?

Well, one of the things that is really going to make a big change is our partnership with Disney at ABC. We were at CBS for 50-something years. And so, for the first time this year, we will be with Disney, on ABC. That gives us the ability to do so much more, as you said, investing in content and storytelling. We have more opportunities for using our Grammy brand and to tell music stories in different ways — documentaries, scripted, and other forms of music content, because Disney, as our partner, has an appetite for more of that than we had previously. So that will be a change. We’ve created Grammy Studios, which is exciting. That’ll be our arm to create a lot of that content, and we’re really approaching content for a strategy. So when we’re doing events, masterclasses, or we’re doing Grammy houses around the world, we’re going to be filming them and creating content around those.

The other question I ask every CEO who comes on is about decision-making. What’s your framework for making a decision? I’m just going to tell you, 18 months ago, when you were on the show, you said you like to think a lot and then make a decision really fast. Has your framework changed at all?

No. If I didn’t include the collaborative approach of decision-making, I was probably thinking too fast, and you might have caught me on the lightning round. A big part of my decision-making is gathering information from people that I trust and people that are around me. And people who are experts, because I don’t pretend to be the expert in every department of what we do. I do think I have a great group of people who give a lot of different insight and diverse perspectives, and really specialized thinking. And I come from sports. I played basketball, as you know. I’m a songwriter, as you know, and those are team efforts. You write songs together; you’re not sitting in a room all by yourself, at least the way that I work. You do that with other people. And the best idea wins, and the same for sports. You have a role on a team. If you’re great at that one role, you do that. You don’t try to do everything. So that has always been my style of leadership or decision-making.

Describe that structure. So your group of people around you, the Recording Academy, is about 300 people. Just how is that structured? How many people work for you, and then what roles do they play in a large organization?

Sure. So we have a president, we have a chief of strategy, and I have a chief of staff. We have different department heads. I have about 12 people reporting to me at this time, and we’ve gone back and forth on that number, and it changes from time to time. I’ve done a couple of reorganizations over the six years now that I’ve been in the role. And each of those department heads manages a department, but they all report up to me. We ultimately have meetings to make the decisions that we think are the most important. Right now, we’re undergoing a strategic plan build, which is, I think, incredible. And it’s been an amazing process for our organization. Each of the department heads is bringing ideas, and we’re coming up with objectives and goals, and real strategies to accomplish those goals. I really enjoyed the process. And then, of course, budgeting against that is another thing that’s going to be a fun challenge for us. So we’re right in the middle of that process.

The reason I ask all this is that I feel like if we rewound the clock 5, 10 years ago, I could understand the music industry. And my thesis on the show is that if you pay attention to what happens to the music industry, you will know what will happen to every other creative industry five years from now. The change is always fastest in music.

Five years ago, okay, we’ve come through the shift to streaming. Artists understand they’re going to get paid pennies on the dollar from Spotify, even if they got a billion streams. We have to find other revenue lines. We’re going to do sync licenses, where everyone’s going to do a Keds ad. We’re going to be on tour all day and all night.

Keds, that’s a deep cut, but thank you.

You know it. Now it’s like that’s all upended. I want to ask you about the vibes of the industry right now, and it’s not just AI that’s upending the industry. I’ve been reading the music press this past week. Everyone’s talking about blue dot fever. This notion that there are blue dots and all the Ticketmaster seating charts that represent empty seats, and big artists are canceling tours. You got Meghan Trainor, the Pussycat Dolls, and Post Malone, who just canceled about six dates. Well, first of all, I’m just curious: do you think blue dot fever is real?

I do. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but from what I’m reading, and I’m probably reading a lot of the same things you are. It seems like it’s a very, very serious issue, and it seems like we’ve been trying to deal with ticketing issues for some time now. There are some discrepancies in the information that we’re hearing. Hopefully, we can get to the bottom of some of it. Obviously, there are legal cases going on, but the vibes in the industry from what I’m seeing are that there’s a lot of trepidation. There’s a lot of concern.

There are fears around some of the ticketing issues, but also AI. And I’m sure that’s the topic that is at the tip of everyone’s tongue. But I also see a lot of opportunity. There’s more music being created and more music being listened to. There are a lot of live opportunities out there. I know you mentioned some that have been canceled, but there are others that are doing really, really well. I was just at Coachella a couple of weeks ago. And what a spectacle, what an amazing event and series of events. Now you see they sold out for next year without even announcing a lineup. So there are things that are working really, really well.

The reason I’m pushing and I’m starting with live [performances] is again, five, 10 years ago, I think the industry figured it out; there’s stuff we can monetize, and there’s stuff we can’t. And the idea that the music itself was hard to monetize, I think that was a paradigm shift in the industry. You’re going to cut a record, and that thing is not going to make you all the money, unless you’re at the very top of the game. It’s all the other stuff that’s going to make you money. That pressure has led to rising ticket prices. Post-COVID, everyone’s going to be on tour forever.

But also, the demand has led to some rising ticket prices. I think there’s a high demand to see a lot of artists, depending on who they are. And again, you’ve said some artists that didn’t have as much success selling, but there have been other events where money’s not even the object. People just want to go see great entertainers and great music. So I think it’s a combination of both.

Do you think ticket prices are just going to keep going up? I worry that ticket prices are just going to keep going up.

Well, considering what’s happened to other commodities or other things in our world that we live in, it doesn’t seem like there’s any end in sight. You look at gas, you look at food, you look at rent, the cost of living. I hope that ticket prices find some kind of level, because I would hate that to be an experience that only certain people get to take advantage of. I think music, watching music, and being entertained by songwriters, creators, and singers, that’s a part of who we are. And that’s stuff that we need just to feel human and to feel alive and to be able to find that common ground with other people.

I would like to think we find a way to allow people to go to concerts. But again, if

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